


All The Stars Are Closer

by skitzofreak



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Do NOT copy to another website, Fulcrum, Gen, Partisans, Rating will go up, Rebel Alliance, Steela Gerrera lives, Tumblr Prompt, based on fanart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 15:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: Light spills over her shoulder and down into a completely black hole beneath her. No lamps. No man. No movement.“Sorry, Commander,” Idryssa says softly. “It seems they did not make it this far after – “ She stops abruptly as Steela’s fist flashes into a ‘hold’ gesture, Idryssa’s blade glinting at the ready in a moment. For the second time that day, Steela drops to her knees in the cold mud of Lah’mu and stares down into nothing.She had not imagined it. She could not have imagined –--In the grand scheme of the Galactic Civil War, the life and choices of Commander Steela Gerrera, leader of the Partisans, might make very little difference.Or it might change everything.





	All The Stars Are Closer

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on [this amazing fanart](https://nyxtastic.tumblr.com/post/169361227338/ok-but-what-if-the-other-gerrera-adopted-jyn) of 'the other Gerrera' finding and raising Jyn. Details (i.e. spoilers for The Clone Wars tv series) in the end notes. The prompts that frame each chapter are from @jynappreciationsquad's Jyn Week prompts. This was meant to be a Jyn-centric story, but I figure it probably veered a little too much away from her as the focus to count. Anyway, thanks, @nyxtastic, for letting me play with this idea!  
> 

****

**(15 BBY / Lothal Year 3261)**

_You could be doing so much more_ , the dull white words read, and Steela glares at the datapad in her hand as the ship shudders and rattles around her. The hard edge of the bunk under Steela’s legs presses into the backs of her thighs like dull knives with each unsettling jolt, but she ignores it, ignores the alarming creaking of the ancient bulkheads around her, the overt vibrations running through the deck plating. The Partisans are not the poorest equipped rebel operation in the galaxy these days, but they still have to scrounge for gear around the Empire’s ever-tightening grip on the markets. So this old freighter is the best she has available for this little…side trip.

On the cracked screen of the console in the corner of her tiny personal cabin (being the commander has it’s perks), the frozen image of an old friend still crackles. Lyra Erso scrambled the comm line between her little farm and the emergency channel Steela set up for her, but Steela has left her end open. In the small part of her mind not occupied with the datapad in her hand, Steela is trying hard (and failing) to avoid calculating out the odds that Lyra is already dead. Almost two days since her transmission, two full days since her image burst over Steela’s console screen in a screech of static – _Steela, they found us!_ – then frozen as Lyra immediately initiated a full wipe of all her console drives. Which is good, Steela reminds herself. That was what she was supposed to do. It was what they had rehearsed. Also as they had rehearsed, Steela had immediately ordered the freighter to turn and full burn for Lah’mu. Her inspection of the Partisan cell on Kothlis can wait, Lyra cannot. Not if the Empire has found her.

No, Steela reminds herself absently, prodding at the offensive sentence on the datapad screen, she supposes the Empire has found _Galen_. Any record marking Lyra as a person of interest to the Empire have long been destroyed, and if anyone in the grey uniform knows who Jyn Erso is, Steela will eat her own damn boot. The Empire does not seek Lyra or Jyn, but it has invested years into hunting Galen Erso and his brilliant mind, that poncy administrator in his fancy cape more than happy to rip through any obstacle in his way regardless of the collateral damage. That is all Lyra and her small child are to the Empire. That is all anyone they don't plan to use ever are to the Empire. Collateral damage.

But this is defeatist thinking. Lyra is still alive, and likely huddled in a cold, dark bunker in the hills behind her farm, trying to keep her little girl’s hungry protests quiet, trying to keep her withdrawn, self-absorbed husband occupied. (Force help her, Steela has never and probably will never understand what Lyra sees in Galen Erso. A smart man, a decent man, sure – but a man, in Steela’s opinion, with his gaze fixed firmly on his own navel and no intention of lifting his head if he can help it.)

Not that Steela doesn’t sometimes see the appeal of a little willful oblivion. The freighter jolts again, so hard this time her teeth rattles, and she has to drop one hand from the datapad to the bunk to steady herself. Under Lyra’s frozen image in the corner, the messages light blinks on Steela’s console – a few dozen urgent messages from Partisan cells all over the galaxy, looking for orders from their commander, looking for more supplies, more information, more reassurance, more _hope._ And all looking to Steela Gerrera to provide it.

And yet, on the datapad before her – _you could be doing so much more_. Steela wrinkles her nose and narrows her eyes, bares her teeth at the datapad, makes her face into a rictus of fierce rage. A Warrior’s Mask, Saw used to call it, when he showed her images of their Onderonian ancestors pulling similar snarling expressions. A Human face made strange and frightening, to weaken the enemy’s resolve and strengthen the warrior’s spirit. Not that Steela sees many holos of Onderonian ancestors these days – not after the Empire began to ‘relocate’ museum pieces to various Core worlds, and ‘clean up’ the historical sources available to locals on her home planet.

Steela widens her terrible grin and sticks out her tongue, raising her eyebrows as high as she can and watching her dim reflection on the datapad screen grimace back at her. It's almost soothing, letting her anger twist and pull at her features, but then her cheeks begin to hurt, and she allows her face to relax. Under her thumb, the almost accusing words still glow. _You could be doing so much more_. As if Ahsoka doesn’t think Steela is stretched thin enough over the three dozen systems her Partisans fight in.

The hell of it is, she's not entirely wrong.

 _This war will not be won with blasters or bombs_ , Ahsoka’s message says, a little further up the screen. _The rebellion will not rise above the Emperor’s evil with gunships and destroyers. It will not even survive the next few years unless we find new ways to fight back. I have a network in place, small yet effective. But I need your help._

Steela is less a creature of words than she is a creature of deeds, but she can read between the lines of that piece of the message easily enough. A war fought with spies and politicians, that’s what it means. Force, Saw would have hated that. Steela purses her lips and closes her eyes, lets herself ride the brief flash of grief that always accompanies thoughts of her long-dead brother. It passes, as it always does (faster and faster as the years go by, except for the times when it hits her like a crowbar to the heart and haunts her for days), and then looks once more to the datapad. Idly, she scrolls the letter from Ahsoka a little further down, keeping the screen’s automatic shut-off from engaging. _Work with me, Steela_ , the letter says (requests, cajoles, because Ahsoka never says things anymore unless she needs something, unless she has some goal for the saying). _You are one of the most connected people we have in the Inner Rim. I need the intel the Partisans could provide. You need better access to Alliance Command’s resources. Neither of us can carry the burden of this war alone, my friend._

 _(It’s a weapon_ , Lyra bites her lip and stares at her hands, clenching and unclenching pale fingers on the diner bartop. Steela nurses her beer and watches Lyra’s knuckles whiten more than usual, notes the usual bits of earth under Lyra’s nails flaking and dropping to the smooth surface as her friend works through the hard truth. _He’s building a weapon, and he doesn’t even know it. He’s being used, Steela, but he won’t listen to me because ‘Orson’s my friend, love, and I know you don’t like him but –‘_

She stops, her hands clenched so hard they are trembling, and all Steela can do is sigh and set down her glass _. So then,_ she says at length under the gentle noise of the diner, _what shall you do? What would you have me do?)_

Out loud in her cabin, Steela lifts her head and snaps, “What would you have me do, Tano? You’re not even supposed to be _alive_.”

The cabin rattles in response; a short-tang vibroblade falls through a hole in the safety netting to clatter on the deck. The torn bit of netting swings gently over it, frayed ends swaying in time to the old ship’s excessive movement. She glares at the net, then the loose blade. Debates simply leaving it to rattle and bounce around the floor. Why should she have to clean up everything around here? She has at least a dozen other Partisans on this ship, her own personal cadre. She has a medical droid and a cleaning droid, old and in need of repairs as they are. She has…she has…

Steela sighs, sets the datapad down on the bunk, and goes to fetch the blade. Good blades are hard to find these days (people who know how to use them are even harder). No sense letting this one get chipped or lost because she's in a snit. No sense letting her personal standards drop because she's worried about her friend. Steela doesn’t have enough friends left that she can afford to lose another.

Not that she has lost Lyra yet, even if the Empire descended on her isolated hiding place.

Not that she will lose Ahsoka, even if she refuses the other woman’s offer.

 _I count you as one of the Alliance’s greatest assets_ , Ahsoka tells her, and even through the impersonal flat words of the datapad screen, Steela can hear the conviction and warmth of the Jedi’s voice. Ahsoka Tano has many gifts, but her strongest, in Steela’s experience, is her fierce, uncompromising sincerity. Well, that, and her ability to fall completely and utterly off the galactic radar when she so chose. An enviable skill, Steela thinks as she glances at her blinking console, noting the parade of unread messages from the many, many people who need something from Steela Gerrera. People who by necessity know who she is and how to contact her at any time. Sooner or later, one of them will sell her to Empire. It hurts to think so, but Steela has been fighting for too many years already, has lost too much, seen too many people gunned down by their allies not to assume it will be her own fate one way or another. Ahsoka’s ability to vanish from the world might come in handy then, for sure.

It might have come in handy four years ago, too, though Steela is working hard not to think about _that_. ( _If it were just me_ , Lyra whispers, tucking her shaking hands under her arms and staring with empty, unseeing eyes at the plate of uneaten food in front of her. _If it were just me, I’d let him make his choices_. _I’d stay with him, and face whatever fate came to us_. _But…_

 _But Jyn,_ Steela finishes the sentence as Lyra trails off.

 _But Jyn_ , Lyra agrees, and for the first time since she walked into the diner to meet Steela, her face loses the unfocused, lost quality that had made her seem small and uncertain. Steela watches Lyra’s eyes turn sharp and her jaw turn hard. Jyn Erso is four years old, has spent at least three of those years living with ‘Uncle Orson’ half-camped in her home while her parents’ smiles grow more and more brittle. Steela suspects that Krennic showers toys and presents on the child as half bribe, half warning, and wonders how much of it Jyn understands.

 _Krennic doesn’t get Jyn_ , Lyra says after a long silence, and her voice is flat, final. _And he doesn’t get Galen_.

Steela pushes her half-finished beer away, and turns to look her friend in the eye. _What would you have me do?)_

 _Help me, my friend,_ Ahsoka’s letter begs (bargains, commands). _Together we will keep the rebellion alive._ _You have done much for the free peoples of the galaxy, I know this._ _You could be doing so much more_.

(Galen Erso looks around the small homestead, the overgrown fields and the worn prefab house built into the dirt to keep it warm in the winters. _Are we safe here?_

Beside him, Lyra sighs and sets their four year old child into his arms, where the girl squirms like a puppy, chattering away about the adventures she and her dolls will surely have in these rolling black hills as her parents stand silent and uncertain. _As safe as we can be_ , Lyra tells her spouse, and turns back to Steela. _As safe as anyone could possibly make us_ , she adds firmly, because of course she can see the doubt in Steela’s eyes. She has always been able to see what is in Steela’s eyes.

 _As safe as I can make anything_ , Steela agrees, and wishes she had more to give. Overhead, the grey Lah’mu sky rumbles, and a chill mist rolls in from the hills almost faster than the eye can follow. A prelude to heavier storms, Steela thinks. A poor omen for a new home.

 _Mama!_ Jyn Erso exclaims over her father’s shoulder, tiny fist clutching the ill-fitting, second-hand shirt that Steela had procured for him. _Mama, look! Rain!_ Her high-pitched giggle rings out through the muffling mists, and Steela turns in time to see Lyra’s hard expression soften around the edges. Jyn reaches up with her free hand and tugs a strand of her own messy brown hair forward, watching as the silver mist collects on the line and then drips softly to her father’s shirt. _I’m raining, Papa, look!_

 _Yes, Stardust,_ Galen replies, his voice softer and sweeter than Steela has yet heard. _Rain_.)

The intercom crackles over her head, just barely loud enough over the rattling, banging, slamming rhythm of the old ship shaking itself apart. “We’re about to drop out of hyperspace, Commander. Five minutes until landfall. Unless a Star Destroyer’s sitting over the house,” her pilot adds dryly. “In which case, I guess we’re about five minutes from being space dust. Either way, buckle up!”

“Thank you, Pel,” she replies, shaking her head to banish silvery rain and a child’s delighted laughter. “All fighters to battle stations. Tell the gunners they are clear to fire on sight of any Imperial vessel.”

“Copy, guns hot and free,” Pel crackles back, and the intercom goes silent again.

On the console, Lyra’s frozen, slightly blurry image is turned away from Steela, only part of her cheek and jaw visible, dark hair fluttering around in an unkempt halo as she turns to look behind her. Lyra stopped wearing the elaborate braids of her homeworld years ago, but Steela still sometimes finds herself startled at the change.

In the background of the image, a small form is just barely visible. Despite herself, Steela leans forward and peers at the image. The figure clutches something fuzzy and white, a doll of some kind, the too-large straps of an oversized pack hanging loosely over her bony shoulders. Possibly everything she owns is in that sack. Or at least, everything she will own in about five minutes, when Steela swoops from the sky and plucks her family off the only homeworld the child probably remembers. Steela squints a little more at the image, trying to pick out more details. Eight year old Jyn is still small, chubby cheeked and wide eyed, but her messy brown hair is now in two tight, intricate braids.

Steela wonders what it means, that Lyra wears her hair in a tired, sloppy bun, but takes the obvious time and care to see her child’s hair woven in the correct style for a pre-pubescent child of the upper middle class in Aria Prime’s capital city.

( _Steela, they found us!_ )

The ship jolts once again, harder than before, and Steela slams her palm against the bulkhead to keep herself from pitching forward to the deck. She holds her breath, but a moment later the intercom crackles again.

“No enemy contacts on scope,” Pel informs her, and Steela allows herself to breathe out. “Cleared to land, entering atmo in thirty seconds. Looks like luck is on our side, Skipper.”

“We shall see,” Steela murmurs.

But luck, she discoveres as the freighter settles with a roar next to the husk of a burned-out prefab, has not sided with Steela after all. The ever-present rains of Lah’mu suppressed any flame or smoke, but the prefab burned long enough for the rounded roof to cave in, for the walls to crumble and splinter into blackened shards stabbing into the grey sky at odd angles. It's a testament to the Empire’s thorough cruelty; even the nearby workshop has been torched into a pile of charcoaled wreckage, a few shattered bits of an old SE droid piled carelessly nearby.

Steela barely looks at any of it, her focus drawn to the only thing in the immediate vicinity that does not appear to have been touched by fire.

“May the Force shelter and warm her,” Idryssa murmurs, sweeping her hands through the sodden air with an artful gesture of sorrow. Then, when no one responds, she sighs and touches Steela’s shoulder. “Bury her, or burn her, Commander? What were her traditions?”

 _A tomb in the great Temple on Coruscant_ , the thought swims up through Steela’s mind like a leviathan rising from some deep, dark ocean, slow and cold and distant. _But that was before, when Jedi were real_. She steps slowly towards the pile of cold meat and muddy rags shaped like her friend. Kneels into the mud, pulls away her heavy gauntlet and shivers as the chill air curled around her exposed skin.

Or perhaps there is something on Aria Prime that Lyra would have preferred, except Lyra left Aria Prime, Lyra no longer wears her hair in the braids of a scholar and explorer, Lyra no longer –

Steela’s fingers find the place on the chilled neck where a heartbeat should have been.

_(As safe as I can make you.)_

It hadn’t been enough.

 “Spread out,” Idryssa says to the rest of the crew from somewhere right behind Steela’s shoulder and far, far away. “Search for any signs of life. She was not here alone, was she, Commander?”

_(Steela, they found us!)_

“Spouse,” Steela manages, and scrubs at her wet face with wet hands, tugs at her wet scarf over wet hair because everything here is wet, everything here is damp and covered in black mud. Cold. Filthy.

Dead.

They left her to rot in the mud. Steela’s jaw clenches and her heart aches and aches. If Saw could see this, he would rage for hours, he would fly out and find the beast who left a good woman piled like so much refuse in a field -

Idryssa’s voice, calm and practical as ever, takes on a commanding edge. “The spouse, look for the spouse! Any bodies in the – ah, I mean, is anybody in the house?”

 _(He’s building a weapon, and he doesn’t even know it. He’s being_ used, _Steela, and he won’t listen - )_

_(You could be doing so much more.)_

“Empty!” Pel sticks her head out of the burned ruins, pink lekku almost obnoxiously bright and cheerful against the grey and black devastation around her. “Not even much stuff here to burn, looks like. No datapads or drives, either, although I’ll do a double sweep on that if you want, Skipper. Oh, but,” she jabs one pink arm up into the air and waves something small and white at them. “I did find this. Stormtrooper doll. Your friend a, um, collector or something?”

( _Look, Mama! Rain!_ )

Shit!

“They have a child!” Steela exclaims, memory and terror and hope surging up inside and driving her to her feet, “A child! Find her!”

The crew pauses, startled by her sudden burst of energy, by her announcement. Then Idryssa’s composed face pales, Pel squeaks in horror as she clutches the stormtrooper doll to her chest, and even Benthic’s dark eyes narrow in surprise and concern. The cadre turn to regard the ruined farm in earnest now, J-zzar dropping to their knees to take a deep whiff of the earth, Hozem riffling through his pack for some tracking gizmo or other. Steela leaves them to it, in case they find something. In case Lyra’s spouse and child had run no farther than Lyra had before the soldiers in white armor turned their rifles on her back and –

“Bury the body,” Steela points to Hozem, who bows as she marches away from the wreckage. She gestures sharply to Idryssa over her shoulder. “With me.”

“Yes, Commander,” Idryssa yanks her serrated dagger from her belt and falls into step with Steela.

“I’m low,” Steela tells her as she pulls her rifle from her back and begins to snap the elongated barrel and power-concentrator mod to the body of it. It's still possible that the armored dogs of the Empire might yet wander these hills, and Steela has no intention of meeting them unprepared.

“That scuffle in Mygeeto ran us all low,” Idryssa sighs, and hands Steela one of her own backup blaster ammo packs. Steela clips it to her configured rifle, completing the transformation from semi-auto short-range configuration to sniper configuration.

“We’ll resupply in D’Qar,” Steela drops her voice low and softens her step, moving as swiftly as she dares and as quietly as she can over the rough terrain of the hills.

“Alliance always wants too much for supplies,” Idryssa’s voice now takes on a harsher note than usual, a tang of bitterness around the edges.

 _Not this time,_ Steela thinks but keeps to herself. _Not after I call Tano_.

She is tired of not doing enough.

But first –

The cave is empty when Steela sweeps her scope across it from the nearest hilltop. No signs of life. No white armor. Not even any footprints in the soft mud, any evidence of passage swept away by rain. Steela waits a solid ten minutes anyway, lying in the muck on her belly as she peers through the scope. She flips between infrared and electromagnetic, checking for both organic and synthetic life forms. The days of the droid armies have passed, but some lessons were learned hard, and not soon forgotten.

Idryssa wears fewer layers than Steela and no armor to speak of, but she stays just as still and watchful beside her commander. She also scans the area with her macrobinoculars, and a faint beeping sound tells Steela that her second in command is skipped through local frequencies in her earpiece as well, checking for Stormtrooper comms in the area.

At last, Steela decides that if there is some kind of ambush or trap down there, she will just have to deal with it up close.

The hatch is exactly where she remembers it, but when she tugs at the disguised lid, she discoveres it is only half-latched. Someone had not entirely engaged the seal on the inside. Or, perhaps, been unable to fully rotate the heavy, slightly rusted lock-wheel. As she enters the code only she and three other people in the galaxy could possibly have known (two, now, and perhaps less), she finds herself –

Not praying. No, the last time Steela Gerrera prayed was almost eight years ago, dangling over a cliff edge on Onderon with her brother’s hand painfully tight around her own. If there is anything in the galaxy that listens to prayers, it hadn’t helped Saw then, and it wouldn’t help Steela now. So she does not, as she hooks her still-bare fingers under the gritty edge of the hatch and shoves upwards, pray.

But she does hope. She hopes that when she opens this hatch, the soft warm light of the emergency lamps she stocked in the hide-out glow beneath her. She hopes that a man holding his probably frightened but healthy child will call out her name, grieving but safe from the Empire. Safe from his own genius. She lifts and she hopes - 

Light spills over her shoulder and down into a completely black hole beneath her. No lamps. No man. No movement.

“Sorry, Commander,” Idryssa says softly. “It seems they did not make it this far after – “ She stops abruptly as Steela’s fist flashes into a _hold_ gesture, Idryssa’s blade glinting at the ready in a moment. For the second time that day, Steela drops to her knees in the cold mud of Lah’mu and stares down into nothing.

She had not imagined it. She could not have imagined –

Movement. A tiny scuffling sound, a whispered gasp.

“Come, child,” Steela calls into the darkness. “It is time to come out.”

Another moment, and then a small form pulls herself into the dim light of the open hatch. Jyn Erso looks up at her, squinting into the light with red-rimmed eyes dulled from hunger and exhaustion. The girl’s clothes are stained with dried mud and grass, her braids tangled and frayed around her dirty face. One small hand is wrapped uselessly around a broken emergency lamp, the other clutches at something near her throat.

Idryssa gasps softly, and fumbles at her belt until she finds her own torch. The beam of light lances down the old ladder and makes the girl flinch.

Steela’s rage at the Empire bursts over her like a tidal wave, but now is not the time. Now is not the place. So she waits only a moment for it to recede to manageable levels, and then leans forward and stretches out her hand. “Come, Jyn. We have a long way to go,” she says, and knew in a moment of pure understanding that it is more true than she even means. Whatever path Steela walks now, wherever she leads the Partisans or this little girl peering up at her, whatever fate waits for them all at the end, it will be…a long way to go.

But this is not the time, and the child has no need of predictions or premonitions. She has need of food, warmth, a place to rest. So Steela puts it aside, puts it all aside, and holds out her hand into the dark.

“M- Mama,” Jyn begin, then falls silent, her voice scratchy from disuse and tears and probably dehydration. “She’s gone,” the child continues at last, and Steela feels the rage rise within her once more, another terrible wave crashing through her heart. She takes a deep breath, lets it break over her, lets it recede.

“I know.” Steela glances up at Idryssa, her eyebrows raised, and nods to the entrance of the cave. The other woman climbs to her feet and hurries out, already calling up Pel on the comm, ordering them to bring the ship to her location. No need to take the child back to the burned out house. No need for her to see –

“Papa,” Jyn swallows, or tries to, her dry lips so chapped they have cracked and bled at some point in the last two days.

“Later,” Steela tries to stop her, but too late, the girl’s eyes narrow, her chin lifts, and though her voice wobbles and cracks, there is a current flowing underneath it when she speaks, a current that Steela recognizes all too well.

“He left,” she says. “He - he _left._ ”

( _The injustices done to our people cannot go unchallenged, sister_ , Saw growls, his eyes narrow, his chin raised high, the rage flowing beneath his words like the deceptively swift currents of a calm river. _What our so called king did was cruel, and he will_ answer _for it_.

 _He will_ , Steela promises, _but not today, brother. Not yet. Wait for the right moment. Gather our forces. Wait._ )

(Steela takes her own advice. Saw does not.)

“Yes, he left. And so must we, for now. We have a long way to go,” she repeats, feeling the truth of it stretch out before her feet. “And much to do.”

It takes the child a long, awkward moment to scramble up the rusty ladder, but eventually she's close enough for Steela to grab her by the shirt and pull her the rest of the way. “What do we – “ she pauses, coughs a little. Behind her, Steela can hear the rattle of the old freighter engine drawing closer. In front of her, Jyn Erso lifts her smudged face, defiance and fear mixed in equal measure throughout her tiny frame. “What are we going to do?”

_(He’s building a weapon.)_

_Whatever Ahsoka asks of me,_ Steela thinks to herself, _so long as she helps me find what I must now seek_.

“More,” she tells the girl, and stands with her hand still outstretched.

Jyn takes it, her tiny fingers tinged blue around the nails as she shivers in the cold, wet wind of Lah’mu. Clothes, Steela adds to her mental list of necessary supplies. And boots - those soft rag-shoes will fall off Jyn’s feet in a week on Onderon.

( _You will help me find Galen Erso,_ she will tell Ahsoka’s blurry holographic face, hours later when she finally gets a secure line to the Alliance’s spymaster.

 _And help you keep your little secret safe_ , Ahsoka will add thoughtfully, peering through the hololens at the huddled form sleeping in Steela’s lap.

 _As safe as we can make her_ , Steela will reply slowly, but with iron in her voice.

_Not an easy task, my friend._

_If the Alliance cannot protect one child, what good is it?_

And Ahsoka will laugh, and nod, which will not surprise Steela at all. Whatever her failures, however hard she tries to hide behind her symbols and her hooded avatars and her austere personas, Steela has always known Ahsoka Tano to be a good person. _Welcome to Fulcrum_ , _Steela,_ she will say. _Let’s get to work._ )

“I want to go home,” Jyn says from her side, watching the old freighter settle into the mud before them, the ramp extending with a metallic groan. The words are so soft that Steela nearly misses them over the clatter and roar of the ship, but they catch her ear just under the cacophony and strike true to her heart.

( _Krennic doesn’t get Jyn_.)

“Perhaps someday you shall,” Steela answers as Idryssa walks up the ramp and turns to wait for them. Benthic appears a moment later, his repeater cannon in his hands, his dark eyes scanning the horizon for Imperial patrols. Jyn eyes the Partisans, shivers and presses closer to Steela’s side.

Steela rubs her bare thumb as soothingly as she can over the girl’s small hand, and steps forward, tugging the child gently along with her. “But first, we have a long way to go.”

**Author's Note:**

> In canon, when [Ahsoka Tano](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ahsoka_Tano) comes to [Onderon](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Onderon) to help the local rebels against the invading Separatists, she and [Lux Bonteri](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lux_Bonteri) train rebels alongside local leader Saw Gerrera and his sister, Steela. Anyway, rebels, Separatists, a vague and unconvincing love triangle, blah blah blah and then Saw shoots down a Separatist ship that knocks Steela over a cliff, Lux goes to save her but starts to fall in too, Ahsoka rushes to save Lux first and then tries to save Steela but gets shot and drops her, resulting in Steela’s death. In THIS story, however, Lux Bonteri was not on the cliff, because I’m tired of that story (you know the one. The story where the woman dies and the man is sad about it but he gets to live and is, like, a better person now or something. That story.) In THIS story, the man who came running to save Steela was Saw himself (appropriate, since he shot the damn ship down in the first place), and Ahsoka saved Steela first, but dropped Saw when she was shot. Lux is still around somewhere, but may or may not be relevant to this story.
> 
> Steela consistently thinks of white-armored stormtroopers throughout the scene on Lah’mu because 1) she doesn’t know exactly what happened here and therefore has no idea Krennic brought the black-armored Deathtroopers to Lahmu instead, and 2) she fought in the Clone Wars, when men in white armor were on her side of the conflict. I don’t imagine she handled Order 66 much better than anyone else that befriended clones - and then saw them gun down their commanders and friends. So yeah, she has a tendency to keep thinking about that, and pressing on that bruise from time to time before pushing herself forward.
> 
> I loved the part in the original script of Rogue One where [Lyra was a Jedi](https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2017/03/lyra-erso-was-supposed-to-be-a-real-jedi-in-another-early-version-of-rogue-one.html) that evaded Order 66, married a scientist, and pretended to be a simple geologist who just happened to worship the Force. I assume that her [outfit in the movie](https://poetryincostume.com/2017/04/05/lyra-era-and-the-red-of-enlightenment-2/) was so similar to the Guardians of the Whills because that was her cover story if anyone ever caught her fighting/displaying Force-sensitivity/etc – she could just say she trained as a Guardian and leave it at that. So yeah, I went with that original interpretation of canon in this story.
> 
> [Fulcrum](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fulcrum_\(title\)) was established by Bail Organa and Ahsoka Tano in 18 BBY as a very specific and elite Rebel Intel network run by Tano herself. I personally think Ahsoka would be eager to include Steela Gerrera in that network, especially since I’m going with the idea that Steela would have stayed with the Alliance, and probably been less vengeance-oriented than Saw was (or became). But it takes time for Ahsoka to establish her network, so Steela doesn’t get the invite until about 3 years after Ahsoka starts it, in 15 BBY / Lothal Year 3261.
> 
> I fully intend for Ahsoka to show up herself later in this story - along with the members of what will eventually become Rogue One.


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